Press
Winging it - First-class to the Isles
Observer - 21st Jan 2001
by Martin Buckley
As the small plane scudded
over the Outer Hebrides at 2,000 feet, Captain Jack Morrison made no
attempt to disguise his pleasure.
Pilots aren't meant to have fun. Passengers like their flying
unexciting, as predictable as pre-election tax-cuts. Ask any airline
pilot: you take off - and switch on the autopilot. Then sit back and watch
the instruments, making sure no one in the back gets a glass of Chardonnay
in their lap.
But we were flying without autopilot, beyond the authority of air
traffic control. We were flying the Royal Mails, over the sea to - not
Skye, but Stornoway.
Captain Morrison is a big, bearish man, with a small moustache, crinkly
eyes and the infinitely reassuring presence of a priest. On the tarmac at
Glasgow airport at five o'clock on a January morning, he was clad in a
black Loganair overcoat, so long it might have been a cassock. Indeed,
Morrison was celebrating an aviation rite: the pre-flight visual check,
prodding the plane's nether regions with the beam of a pen torch.
Postal workers were loading the Hebrides' first-class mail into the
hold (second-class travels by boat). A few minutes later the runway lights
were streaming beneath our wheels. I was jammed into the jump seat at the
Captain's elbow. His First Officer, Mike Jardine, took us up.
I was starting my journey around the world in Britain's remotest skies,
and in a ribbed, winged box with all the beauty of a flying freight
container. 'Lovely plane to fly,' said Mike. 'Looks ungainly, but handles
like a light aircraft.' In fact, the Shorts 360 is a direct descendant of
the first powered planes ever flown: Shorts was set up in 1908 to produce
the Wright brothers' Flyers under licence. Nowadays they make fuselages
for the ultramodern Lear jet. We banked steeply over the sulphur ribbons
of night-time Glasgow, and set course for Benbecula. An hour later we
landed at a runway aligned by some murderous surveyor with the only two
peaks for miles around. 'Great fun in fog,' commented Mike.
By the time we had unloaded, the sky was turning rosy. Continuing north
past Taransay, where the BBC isolated its Castaways, we crossed the waters
of the Minch to Stornoway.
I had persuaded the Post Office to let me hitch-hike with the mails to
some of the most far-flung post-boxes in Britain. I went out with postman
John Crawford, delivering vaccines from our flight to the hospital, and a
large parcel to the Coast Guard. 'What do they want with a load of women's
underwear?' I asked. John grinned. 'None of my business, even if it was.'
Eddie Mackenzie, the man in charge of the Western Isles mails, took me
to meet Mrs Christina Bannerman, who must be the oldest postwoman in the
world. In 1914 when she left school, she was given the job of delivering
telegrams to the Admiralty. 'I remember the bay being full of grey
battleships,' she told me. 'I'd to wear a uniform with a long skirt, and a
belt with a big leather pouch. I'd collect the telegrams from the
telegraph machine, and carry them in my pouch up to the admiral.' The
telegram is a thing of the past - almost. Mrs Bannerman has her own
telegram from the Queen.
At dusk, our dumpy cargo plane was waiting for the night mail. A new
crew had taken over at midday, and the Short had spent the daylight hours
ferrying passengers. In the evening the seats are stripped out again, and
the hold once more carries mail. We took off, and slid south beneath a
full moon. 'The climate in the Highlands is incredibly challenging,'
Captain David Savage told me. 'It's real hands-on flying. Piloting these
small planes about the islands is about as close to the days of pioneer
flying as you can get in British aviation today.'
Just beneath us the snowy peak of Ben Nevis was gleaming.
Martin Buckley is now heading south, to France. You can email him
about his journey on mbwingingit@hotmail.com.
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